IMAGINE AN ISLAND - this collection of images was exhibited at the Lillie Art Gallery, Milngavie, Scotland from Oct 4th to Nov 7th, 2014. The images were all made on the Isle of Iona in the Inner Hebrides. Famous as the island where Columba founded his monastery in 563AD, it has been a place of pilgrimage for centuries.

I first set foot on Iona in 1978 and was captivated from the start by the island's white shell sand and turquoise sea beauty. Visiting, along with my family, became an annual event, our own yearly pilgrimage.

In 2011, I decided to undertake a photographic project, visiting the island every month for 12 consecutive months to make images. In part this was a response to an increasing desire to make a creative statement about this place that had drawn me back year after year. I also wanted to forge a deeper relationship with the island, to look a little closer at this one small piece of earth and discover what it had to communicate to me.

The images in this collection are partly drawn from that year but also some from previous and subsequent visits, an ongoing conversation with a specific place. Over time, I have found myself drawn almost exclusively to the shoreline, the boundary of land and sea which defines Iona as an island. The meeting of sea, sky and light, the constantly shifting patterns and forms left by the receding tide and the carving of rock by wind and water have been constant sources of fascination. Iona has always mirrored for me a childlike and largely romantic notion about islands and there is no doubt that this 'imaginary' island has deeply influenced what my eye has been drawn to and the images I have ultimately chosen to make.

I discovered that there is a certain loneliness comes from being on a small island on the edge of a vast ocean. Looking west at the end of a grey day or even deep into a long summer night with the light fading slowly and the cry of an oyster catcher echoing from the rocks has both a beauty and a poetic melancholy about it. Set this alongside the extraordinary uplift of spirit at the first glimmer of the day's light on untouched sand with the soft whisper of wave on shore is to witness two poles of existence - the birthing and the dying, beginnings and endings. My own awareness of transience has been increased. I have often been the sole witness to a moment in time, a particular configuration of light and form that is never to be repeated.